{"id":10713,"date":"2025-01-16T15:50:13","date_gmt":"2025-01-16T15:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=10713"},"modified":"2025-01-16T22:27:43","modified_gmt":"2025-01-16T22:27:43","slug":"as-though","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/16\/as-though\/","title":{"rendered":"As Though"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Honorable Mention: The 2024 Fare Forward Poetry Competition<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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As Though<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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By Sally Thomas<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Hawksbill Peak, Nebo, North Carolina<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The hills fall down in blue, an undulant
Perspective, sky and trees that touch each other
As shadows touch the living things that cast them.
But which thing is the thing, and which the shadow?
From where I\u2019m standing\u2014here\u2014this table rock
Scrubbed clean by wind and rain\u2014it\u2019s hard to tell
Where substance ends and likenesses begin.
Across the gorge, a water-laden stormfront
Unleashes rain. Or else that\u2019s stone I\u2019m seeing,
A line of balds, not clouds, that raise themselves
To meet the clouds. I\u2019ve hiked this way before.
I\u2019ve stood here looking out to where the hidden
River chafes through rock. Beneath my feet:
A peak that someone thought recalled a hawk\u2019s
Life-gutting beak, or else the folding knife
Named for it. All we know is made of metaphor.
This planing wind becomes a constant noise
Inside my head, a sound like tearing paper,
Or like a dry field gushing up in flame,
As though the world were ending, as though what
I stood here looking at were not blue hills
But clouds, with angels and the Son of Man,
As though this were a vision, not mere seeing.
Though I believe in things outside myself,
A whole reality composed by one
Great thinker, still my human eyes arrange
The stone, the tree, the line where land meets sky.
My eyes pass on those shapes to be translated
Into a human language: this and that.
When I look down, bare quartzite, shelved with lichen,
Thrusts up its layered, weather-beveled edges
Like more gray lichen. Grasses clump and seam
Where windblown sediment has settled. Here
And there, a rain-filled rock pool like an eye
Shines as though it saw the sky it holds.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Illustration by Sarah Clark, from a photo by Leslie Cross on Unsplash<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Sally Thomas<\/strong> is a poet and fiction writer, author of two books of poetry (including the forthcoming Among the Living<\/i>), a novel, and a collection of short fiction. She is co-editor of the 2022 anthology Christian Poetry in America Since 1940<\/i>, which won Christianity Today<\/i>‘s 2023 Book Award in Culture and the Arts. Since January 2024 she has been co-founder of and a regular contributor to the Substack newsletter Poems Ancient and Modern<\/i>.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“As Though” by Sally Thomas \/\/ Honorable Mention, 2024 Fare Forward Poetry 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